From the moment it unfurled its distinctive hexagonal mirrors in early 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope has treated the world to a steady stream of remarkable images. This year was no exception: over the course of 2024, the JWST delighted scientists and amateur astronomers alike with everything from spectacular pictures of nebulae and colliding galaxies to images of some of the most distant objects we’ve ever observed. Here are some of our favorites.
Spiral galaxy images
NASA welcomed the new year by releasing a series of 19 gorgeous images of spiral galaxies. Combining data from the JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIR-Cam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) with visible-light images from the Hubble Space Telescope, these images provide a detailed view of these galaxies’ intricate–and beautiful–internal structures.
A neutron star in the remnants of a supernova
Around 168,000 years ago, a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud exploded in a spectacular Type II supernova. The light from this event reached Earth in early 1987, and the explosion was bright enough to be seen by the naked eye for several months. Ever since, scientists have speculated on what sort of stellar remnant might have been left behind. Most models suggested a neutron star, but no such object was detected–until February, when the JWST’s infrared cameras solved the mystery by finding the theorized neutron star hiding in a cloud of dust.
Incredibly distant and ancient objects
The JWST continues to break records for the most distant (and thus oldest) examples of a variety of celestial objects:
- Supermassive black hole: In March, the JWST found GN-z11, at the time the oldest galaxy ever observed. The galaxy’s remarkable luminosity suggests that it’s home to a supermassive black hole, which would be the most distant such black hole we’ve ever found.
- Galaxy: In May, the JWST broke its own record for the most distant galaxy ever observed with JADES-GS-z14-10, a galaxy that dates to only 300m years after the Big Bang.
- Black hole merger: Also in May, the JWST found evidence for a merger of two galaxies and their central black holes, dating to 740m years after the Big Bang.
The Horsehead Nebula in detail
The Horsehead Nebula was first recorded in 1888 by Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming, who noticed it on a photographic plate of the night sky. Fleming would no doubt be astonished and delighted by this photo, which is one of several released in April by the JWST team, and zooms in on a small part at the top of a shape that she recorded simply as an “area of nebulosity in a semi-circular indentation.”
Aligned bipolar jets in star-forming region
As stars form, some material is ejected in jets perpendicular to the plane of the accretion disk; scientists theorized that in star formation regions, these bipolar jets would be aligned with one another. In June, JWST provided a spectacular confirmation of this theory with direct images of the phenomenon.
Two images of galaxies colliding
As far as cosmic events go, there are few more dramatic than one entire galaxy crashing into another entire galaxy. The JWST released images of two such events this year. The first (left), of the event Arp 142, involves galaxies NGC 2936 and NGC 2937; the former was once a spiral galaxy, but the gravity of the collision has stretched and distorted it, resulting in a curious shape that gave NGC 2936 its nickname: The Penguin Galaxy. The second image (right) is of Arp 102, a galactic merger some 465m light years away. In both cases, the two galaxies involved will merge over the course of several hundred million years into a single ubergalaxy.
A possibly unknown phase of galactic formation
In September, the JWST observed an ancient galaxy (dating to 1bn years after the Big Bang) with a previously unseen spectral signature. This signature suggested that the galaxy’s gas was so hot that it was outshining the stars within. The current theory is that this gas was superheated by so-called Population III stars, which were the very first generation of stars to form, and were way hotter and brighter than any that exist today.
A rare gravitational lensing effect
Massive objects bend light and can therefore act like lenses. This image is of a rare type of gravitational lensing effect called “hyperbolic umbilic gravitational lens[ing].” The effect distorts the image of the red galaxy but also magnifies it, allowing for study of its structure–and a comparison with the Hubble Telescope’s image of the same area of the sky shows how much more detail the JWST is able to capture.
Two scary blood-red eyes
This rather sinister image combines data from the Hubble Telescope and JWST, and was released for Halloween. Obviously.
The first brown dwarfs outside the Milky Way
Brown dwarfs are failed stars; they’re significantly larger than even the biggest planets, but not large enough to maintain hydrogen fusion and become full-fledged stars. In October, the JWST found the first evidence for brown dwarfs outside our galaxy, in a young star formation region called NGC 602, which is in the outer part of the Small Magellanic Cloud, about 200,000 light years away.
The Sombrero Galaxy in detail
In November, the JWST turned its attention to Messier 104, also known as the “Sombrero Galaxy.” The galaxy was previously imaged by the Hubble telescope, but the JWST’s images are sharper and more detailed, even if they do rather undermine the galaxy’s nickname–the sombrero’s “crest” is invisible to the JWST’s infrared cameras.
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